CN110520878B

CN110520878B - Organized programmable intranet push notifications

Info

Publication number: CN110520878B
Application number: CN201880024540.XA
Authority: CN
Inventors: A·昂; N·T·克林顿; D·梅耶泽; A·维尔拉恩; N·沃伦可夫; J·L·怀特; K·卡玛斯; 董志华; D·M·科恩; R·纳库尔
Original assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
Current assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
Priority date: 2017-04-12
Filing date: 2018-04-02
Publication date: 2023-03-28
Anticipated expiration: 2038-04-02
Also published as: US10601938B2; EP3610431A1; US20180302482A1; WO2018191042A1; CN110520878A

Abstract

Further, embodiments of the present disclosure help improve the functionality of electronic messaging software and systems by providing selective push notifications to users of these systems in response to new content being published. Embodiments of the present disclosure may provide notifications to some users based on the relevance of published content to those users, while forgoing notifying users that the content is not relevant.

Description

Organized programmable intranet push notifications

Background

Document management systems allow users to create, edit, and share electronic documents. Some document management systems provide notifications to users when content (such as documents and articles) and other resources are added to the system, also referred to herein as "publishing" the documents. In the context of an organization or enterprise, some users may wish to receive real-time or near real-time notifications when others need to access resources or when a particular individual or team member publishes a piece of content. Embodiments of the present disclosure address these matters, and others.

Drawings

In the drawings, which are not necessarily drawn to scale, like numerals may describe similar components in different views. Like numerals having different letter suffixes may represent different instances of similar components. Some embodiments are illustrated by way of example, and not by way of limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings and in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system in accordance with various aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 2 illustrates a flow diagram of an exemplary method in accordance with various aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary design diagram in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure;

4-6 are exemplary screenshots according to various aspects of the present disclosure;

fig. 7-10 are functional diagrams in accordance with various aspects of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

The following description includes systems, methods, techniques, sequences of instructions and computer program products that embody illustrative embodiments of the disclosure. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide an understanding of various embodiments of the inventive subject matter. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that embodiments of the present subject matter may be practiced without these specific details. In general, well-known instruction instances, protocols, structures, and techniques have not necessarily been shown in detail.

Embodiments of the present disclosure described in this application may be implemented using any combination of hardware, firmware, and software. Embodiments may also be implemented as instructions stored on a machine-readable storage device, which may be read and executed by at least one processor to perform the operations described herein. A machine-readable storage device may include any non-transitory apparatus for storing information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer). For example, a machine-readable storage device may include Read Only Memory (ROM), random Access Memory (RAM), magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media, flash memory devices, and other storage devices and media.

Embodiments of the present disclosure may include, or may operate with, a variety of logic, components, modules, and devices. These components may include any combination of hardware, software, or firmware communicatively coupled to one or more processors to perform the operations described herein. A component may be a hardware component, and thus a component may be considered a tangible entity capable of performing specified operations and may be configured or arranged in a certain manner. For example, a circuit may be arranged (e.g., internally or with respect to an external entity such as other circuits) as a component in a specified manner. All or a portion of one or more computer systems (e.g., a standalone, client or server computer system) or one or more hardware processors may be configured by firmware or software (e.g., instructions, application portions or applications) as a component for performing specified operations. In an example, the software may reside on a machine-readable medium.

In some exemplary embodiments, the software, when executed by the underlying hardware of the component, causes the hardware to perform the specified operations. Thus, the term hardware component is understood to encompass a tangible entity, be it a physically constructed, specifically configured (e.g., hardwired) or temporarily (e.g., temporarily) configured (e.g., programmed) to operate in a specified manner or to perform a portion or all of any of the operations described herein. Considering the example of a temporary configuration component, each module need not be instantiated at any one time. For example, where the components comprise a general purpose hardware processor configured using software; the general purpose hardware processor may be configured as respective different components at different times. Thus, software may configure a hardware processor, for example, to constitute a particular component at one time and to constitute a different component at a different time. The components may also be software or firmware components for performing the methods described in the present application.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary embodiment of a computer system 100 in which a set or series of instructions may be executed to cause the system to perform any of the functions discussed in this application. In some example embodiments, the system 100 may operate as a standalone device or may be connected (e.g., networked) to other machines. In a networked deployment, the system may operate in the capacity of a server or a client system in server-client network environment, or it may act as a peer machine in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment. The system may be an in-vehicle system, a wearable device, a Personal Computer (PC), a tablet PC, a hybrid tablet, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a mobile phone, or any machine capable of executing instructions (sequential or otherwise) that specify actions to be taken by that machine.

Although only a single computer system is illustrated in fig. 1, the terms "system," "machine," or "device" may include any collection of systems, machines or devices that individually or jointly perform the various functions of an embodiment of the present disclosure. Similarly, the term "processor-based system" may include any collection of one or more machines controlled or operated by a processor (e.g., a computer), individually or jointly, to execute instructions to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein.

The exemplary computer system 500 in fig. 1 includes a processor 102 (e.g., a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) or both, processor cores, compute nodes, etc.), a main memory 104 and a static memory 106, which communicate with each other via a link 108 (e.g., a bus). The computer system 100 may also include a video display unit 110, an alphanumeric input device 112 (e.g., a keyboard), and a User Interface (UI) navigation device 114 (e.g., a mouse). In one embodiment, the video display unit 110, the input device 112, and the UI navigation device 114 are incorporated into a touch screen display. The computer system 100 may additionally include a storage device 116 (e.g., a drive unit), a signal generation device 118 (e.g., a speaker), a network interface device 120, and one or more sensors (not shown), such as a Global Positioning System (GPS) sensor, compass, accelerometer, or other sensor.

The storage device 116 includes a machine-readable medium 122 on which is stored one or more sets of data structures and instructions 124 (e.g., software) embodied or used by any one or more of the methods or functions described herein. The instructions 124 may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 104, the static memory 106, and/or the processor 102 during execution thereof by the computer system 100, the main memory 104, the static memory 106, and the processor 102 also constituting machine-readable media.

While the machine-readable medium 122 is shown to be a single medium, the term "machine-readable medium" can include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches and servers) that store the one or more instructions 124. The term "machine-readable medium" may include any tangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying instructions for execution by the machine and that cause the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologies of the present disclosure, or that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying data structures used by or associated with such instructions. The term "machine-readable medium" can include, for example, solid-state memories, as well as optical and magnetic media. Specific examples of machine-readable media include non-volatile memory, including, but not limited to, semiconductor memory devices (e.g., electrically programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM)) and flash memory devices, for example; magnetic disks such as internal hard disks and removable disks; magneto-optical disks; and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks.

The instructions 124 may be transmitted or received over a communication network 126 using a transmission medium via the network interface device 120 using any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols (e.g., HTTP). Examples of communication networks include a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), the Internet, a mobile telephone network, a Plain Old Telephone (POTS) network, and a wireless data network (e.g., a Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G LTE/LTE-A or WiMAX network). The term "transmission medium" shall be taken to include any intangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying instructions for execution by the machine, and includes digital or analog communications signals or other intangible medium to facilitate communication of such software.

Fig. 2 depicts an exemplary process in accordance with various aspects of the present disclosure. In this example, method 200 includes identifying content of a publication (205), generating a notification associated with the content of the publication (210), generating an expression defining a list of recipients to receive the notification (215), generating and distributing an electronic communication containing the notification to the recipients (220), determining a relevance of the content of the publication (225), and publishing the notification (230). The steps of method 200 may be performed in whole or in part, may be performed in conjunction with each other and with some or all of the other methods, and may be performed by any number of different systems, such as the system described in fig. 1.

Embodiments of the present disclosure are capable of identifying published content (205), such as news articles, reminders, documents, and other content published via a document management system. The document management system may be implemented (in whole or in part) by a system that performs the functions of method 200, as well as by any combination of other systems and devices (e.g., in communication with each other over a network such as the internet). Embodiments of the present disclosure may also operate in conjunction with content published by other types of software applications and systems, such as social media systems.

In one exemplary embodiment, referring now to FIG. 3, an actor (e.g., a user of a document management system) publishes content to a document management system (e.g., microsoft corporation's Shareopoint Web) via a Web-based interface. FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary screenshot from the perspective of a publishing user. In this example, the user creates an article named "ODC store & infrastructure" and submits the article using the "Publish" link on the top right page of the document.

Referring again to FIG. 3, a document management system (e.g., microsoft corporation's Sharepoint Online) identifies (205) articles published from actors/users and launches "initialization component" and "work item" software components to generate notifications associated with published content (210), and an expression (215) that defines a list of one or more recipient users that are to receive notifications of published content. The system generates an electronic communication containing the notification and sends (220) the communication to a system for distributing electronic communications (in this example, exchange Online by Microsoft corporation). In this context, "electronic communication" may include data packets, text messages, e-mails, and/or any other type of electronic communication in any desired format.

In the exemplary method 200 depicted in fig. 2, the system generates an expression (215) representing a set of "potentially interested" parties to define a list of one or more recipient users who are to receive an announcement of the published content. In some embodiments, the system may generate a list of recipient users based on organizational information for a group of users (such as a hierarchy of managers and employees in a company) and information about relationships between the users. In some example embodiments, relationships between users (e.g., between users and authors publishing content items) may be determined based on various information, such as frequency of communication between users, identification of users participating in a public meeting, and users co-authoring a document.

The expression may be of any length and in any format. In some embodiments, the expression may include instructions in a scripting language that, when executed, builds a list of recipients of the notification. An exemplary expression is as follows:

in the above example, the expression (when executed) causes the system to start with a user ("RootUser"), obtain the first 10 people with whom the user has a business, obtain direct reports for the user, and obtain the first 5 people with each report individually collaborating. The system recursively looks for all levels of direct reports (and the respective top 5 work individuals for each direct report) for the organization.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3, the "initialization component" generates and passes expressions to the "work item" component, but the generation and processing of recipient expressions (as well as other functions of the system) may be performed in any suitable manner by alternative embodiments of the present disclosure. The work item passes the recipient expression to the Loki service to parse the list of recipients to which the notification is to be delivered.

The system distributes the electronic communication containing the notification to one or more recipients in a list of recipients. In some exemplary embodiments, the system may distribute the electronic communication to users in the list of recipients via user mailboxes in an electronic communication distribution system associated with each respective recipient in the list of recipients. In the example depicted in fig. 3, for example, the system calls Exchange on behalf of the author to send a CFM (control flow message) to each recipient, passing the notification payload as the body of the CFM.

In this example, once the mailbox for each recipient is reached, the "transport" component call of the Exchange Online system registers as a distribution agent for processing CFMs. The distribution agent determines the relevance of the published content (225) for each recipient. For each respective recipient, the system issues a notification (230) to the respective recipient if the content is determined to be relevant to the respective recipient, and otherwise foregoes delivering the content to the recipient. In some embodiments (as shown in fig. 3), the electronic communication may be distributed to each potential recipient of the notification before determining whether the published content is relevant to each recipient. In other embodiments, the system may determine whether the content is relevant to the recipient before distributing the notification to the user.

In the case where the communication is distributed to the recipient prior to determining the relevance of the published content to the recipient, the system may selectively publish notifications to some users (e.g., where it is determined that the published content is relevant to those users) while forgoing publication of notifications to other users (e.g., where it is not determined that the published content is relevant to those users).

The system may determine the relevance (or irrelevance) of a piece of content to the potential recipient of the notification based on various criteria. The relevance of a piece of published content may be determined based on the selection of any criteria, and different criteria may be used to determine the relevance of content for different users. Furthermore, the criteria for determining the relevance of a piece of content may be weighted differently. For example, the system may determine that a piece of content is not relevant to users who lack the necessary security permissions to view the content, and exclude those users from receiving notifications of published content. In some embodiments, the system may perform the security determination separately from the relevance determination. For example, if the system determines that the user does not have sufficient security credentials to access a piece of published content, the content may be omitted from any further relevance analysis.

The relevance of the content to the user may also be determined based on other characteristics of the content. For example, the determination of whether content is relevant or irrelevant may be based on characteristics such as the age (age) of the content (e.g., based on a timestamp when the content was published), a comparison of the language in which the content was written to and the language listed as spoken or read by the recipient, the type of content published (e.g., text, images, video, etc.), and based on one or more topics covered in the content.

In some exemplary embodiments, the system may analyze information associated with potential recipients of the notification to determine relevance of the published content to these users. For example, the system may perform an analysis of the published content to identify various characteristics of the content and compare the characteristics to information associated with the user (e.g., from the user's profile on the system) to help determine the relevance/irrelevance of the content to the user. In this case, the system may identify relevant or irrelevant content for a particular user based on the organizational relationship between the user and the author of the content (e.g., the author and the user are in the same group, the user reports directly to the author or vice versa, both the author and the user work on the same project within the organization, etc.). In one exemplary embodiment, the system may determine that the user is collaborating with an author, that the author is in the user's reporting chain, or that the author is in another user B's reporting chain, where user A (the user obtaining the notification) is collaborating with user B. In this example, user A and user B working together on a cross-group project will be notified of content published from their respective administrators, such as re-organizing announcements and the like. In this way, the system can help inform users about content that they are likely to find relevant (e.g., for their job functions), while also helping to avoid pushing notifications to users about content that is not relevant and that is not likely to be of interest to them. In addition to this, this helps to maintain the importance of the push notification system, as users are more likely to receive only notifications that they will find particularly relevant content.

Similarly, the system may determine the relevance of a piece of content based on feedback from other users of the system (e.g., within the document management system). Such feedback may include comments (e.g., positive or negative) as well as critiques. The system may analyze such feedback and include the content as relevant, for example, in response to the content having at least a predetermined proportion of positive feedback. Additionally or alternatively, content may be found to be relevant or irrelevant based on keywords found in comments associated with the published content. In other exemplary embodiments, the system can determine relevance by determining a user's preference for content based on explicit or implicit topic identification. For example, if a user is interested in a topic, or tends to click on news articles on a certain topic, the system may determine that a new news article on the same topic may be relevant to the user.

The system may issue notifications to users in a variety of different ways. For example, the system may send an email, text, or other communication to the user to alert the user of the published content. In another example, referring to FIG. 5, the content published by the author in FIG. 6 is identified in a pop-up notification at the top of the screen of the user's mobile computing device. The notification may include any desired information in any format, and posting the notification to a particular recipient may include adding customized content to the notification prior to posting the notification (e.g., based on recipient-specific information, such as the recipient's name).

For example, in FIG. 5, the notification includes a notification that alerts the user to the name of the author and the name of the article that the author published, and provides a selectable link that, when selected by the user, opens a page that displays the content (as shown in FIG. 6). In some embodiments, the system may provide preference options to the user to influence the type of content the user is notified of, and such preferences may be used to determine the relevance of the content to the user.

Notifications may be provided to users based on software and/or hardware of computing devices operated by different users, and thus notifications may be provided to different users in different formats and in different manners. In some example embodiments, notifications to web clients may be served via flow notifications from an electronic communications distribution system (e.g., exchange in fig. 3), for example.

FIG. 7 illustrates an exemplary functional diagram for providing notifications to mobile clients in conjunction with a "WebHook" notification mechanism operating with Microsoft corporation's Exchange. In this example, the mobile client signals Exchange through the "SPHome" microservice to begin sending notifications. The microservice registers with Exchange to receive WebHook notifications for the user. Upon receiving the notification from Exchange, the SPHome micro-service will send the notification to the notification pipe to push the notification to the mobile device.

FIG. 8 illustrates an exemplary functional diagram associated with the "Loki" component shown in FIG. 3. In this example, the Loki component provides a cache layer for higher cost (e.g., requiring a certain amount of computing time, memory, and/or processing power) queries. For example, given an email address, the Loki component may find a direct report for the user. As described above, the Loki component also parses the recipient expression to identify a list of potential recipients for the notification.

FIG. 9 illustrates an exemplary functional diagram for sending web notifications to a web client actively connected to a service. In some embodiments, the web notification may be displayed to the user as a "toast" pop-up window with information related to the published content. The system may provide a "flow" notification through Exchange. For example, exchange may provide a "pending" notification, where the user's client device requests the notification and the connection between the client device and the system remains active until the notification is sent to the client device, after which the connection is closed. In this example, the client computing device reconnects to the system to obtain the next notification. The Exchange system may also provide a "suspend" notification, where the user's client computing device requests the notification and the connection remains active, as with a "pending" notification, but the notification is sent back on the response stream and the connection is not closed until a timeout occurs or until the client computing device closes the connection.

FIG. 10 illustrates another exemplary functional diagram for sending notifications to an application on a user's client mobile device. In this example, the application (or the client mobile device itself) may not necessarily be actively connected to the system, but the notification to the client device may be displayed as a balloon over an application icon on the display screen of the user device to indicate the notification activity. The user may then activate an application to view the notification. In some cases, the streaming notification subscription in Exchange may have expired and thus may be invalidated by failure to respond to the notification. In this case, the system may "refresh" the Exchange's subscription periodically. For example, the system may receive a signal from an application on the mobile device (such as requesting data or adding an explicit call) and update the subscription (in response to receiving the signal).

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document may contain material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the patent and trademark office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

The use of phrases like "at least one of a, B, or C," "at least one of a, B, and C," "one or more a, B, or C," or "one or more a, B, and C" in this application is intended to be interpreted to mean that a may be present alone in an embodiment, B may be present alone in an embodiment, C may be present alone in an embodiment, or any combination of elements a, B, and C (e.g., a and B, a and C, B and C, or a and B and C) may be present in a single embodiment.

Variations and modifications may be made to the disclosed embodiments without departing from the scope of the disclosure. These and other variations or modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present disclosure, as expressed in the following claims.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor and storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to perform operations comprising:

identifying content published by a document management system;

generating an expression defining a list of one or more recipient users of the document management system to receive an announcement of the published content;

generating a notification associated with the published content;

generating an electronic communication containing the notification;

distributing the electronic communication to each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients, wherein distributing the electronic communication to each respective recipient comprises: distributing the electronic communication to a respective user mailbox in an electronic communication distribution system associated with each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients, wherein the electronic communication is distributed to each respective user mailbox prior to determining whether the published content is relevant to each respective recipient;

determining whether the published content is relevant to each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients; and

for each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients, issuing the notification to the respective recipient if the content is determined to be relevant to the respective recipient, and otherwise not issuing the notification to the respective recipient.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein determining the relevance of the published content comprises: determining that the published content is not relevant to the respective recipient based on the respective recipient lacking a security permission to view the published content.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein publishing the notification to the respective recipient comprises: adding customized content to the notification prior to issuing the notification, wherein the customized content is based on information about the respective recipient.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein determining the relevance of the published content comprises: identifying a hierarchy of organizations to which authors and respective recipients of the published content belong, and wherein the published content is determined to be relevant to the respective recipients based on relationships between the authors and the respective recipients in the hierarchy.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the relationship between the author and the respective recipients is determined based on one or more of: a frequency of communication between the respective user and the author, the respective user and the author participating in a co-meeting, and the respective user and the author co-authoring a document.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein determining the relevance of the published content is based on feedback from a user of the document management system.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein determining the relevance of the published content is based on characteristics of the published content.

8. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

identifying, by the computer system, content published by the document management system;

generating, by the computer system, an expression defining a list of one or more recipient users of the document management system to receive an announcement of the published content;

generating, by the computer system, a notification associated with the published content;

generating, by the computer system, an electronic communication containing the notification;

distributing, by the computer system, the electronic communication to each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients, wherein distributing the electronic communication to each respective recipient comprises: distributing the electronic communication to a respective user mailbox in an electronic communication distribution system associated with each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients, wherein the electronic communication is distributed to each respective user mailbox prior to determining whether the published content is relevant to each respective recipient;

determining, by the computer system, whether the published content is relevant to each respective recipient in the list of one or more recipients; and

9. The method of claim 8, wherein determining the relevance of the published content comprises: determining that the published content is not relevant to the respective recipient based on the respective recipient lacking a security permission to view the published content.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein publishing the notification to the respective recipients comprises: adding customized content to the notification prior to issuing the notification, wherein the customized content is based on information about the respective recipient.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein determining the relevance of the published content comprises: identifying a hierarchy of organizations to which authors and respective recipients of the published content belong, and wherein the published content is determined to be relevant to the respective recipients based on relationships between the authors and the respective recipients in the hierarchy.